Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
AI dialogue voice acting
JeanPhilippeQC
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
I just found a YouTube video from Roarrior called “Ashes of Creation Must Launch With This Feature!” He talks about how voice acting is not a thing Intrepid want to do right now as it’s expensive and Steven consider it a luxury. He brings a solution that could, in my opinion, be a less costly solution: AI voice acting. Basically, he said AI dialogue voice acting would be less costly. He mentions an add-on for WoW Classic (No TBC and WOTLK) that add voices to NPC when they talk to you. He also mentioned that some players prefer to hear voices that read the text for some reason. It could add accessibility to the game. Intrepid want to use the latest technologies, and AI is going better and better. In my honest opinion, they could consider it for post launch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJaMGRXfvis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJaMGRXfvis 5
Comments
but want to buy something else because you've forgotten something the npc doesnt say the same welcoming text over and over again for example.
Why are you using a real persons name?
Maybe they are a real person?
Can you explain why? Instead of tons of VAs for endless hours of recording they can reduce the time (and possibly money) needed by getting a few good VAs to train from and generate many variant voices that can then be expertly edited and adjusted to fit the lines they want VAed.
VAs are still required for this to work. Having expert vocalists to direct how the A.I. should act is a must, and can create a ton of high quality product that can be used for the game.
VAs still get paid and the game saves money on hiring the extras they no longer need.
If your issue is that this takes jobs away from those extras, maybe those extras should be the first ones to step forward to do these offers?
It makes a big difference in terms of immersion and without it, most people won't even read the quests = they wont ever experience the story/most of the story.
With AI voiced dialogue (that continues playing even after you ''spoke'' to the NPC, unless turned off) 99% of people will now experience the story and will have actual understanding of the quests = the quests = a large part of their gameplay will be a more fun experienec, as opposed to feeling like a chore (yes, even when well designed quests can feel like a chore when people decide to ruin their own experience by rushing content).
AI voiced questing should be available at launch.
It seems easy to produce decent quality AI voiced quests in a relatively short period of time and it doesn't look particularly complicated (an intern could do it).
They should go for it.
I use AI voice over everyday for work to convert new customers to shop a product. It's pretty standard today.
I find it jarring, I'd much rather they had real voice actors, the VA industry gets more money and overall audio quality is massively improved.
I also believe it's important that people learn to read, if one of the ways they're incentivised to do that is to fail a quest over and over because they can't read quest dialogue then I'm all for it.
It's like with the tv when internet rose up regarding shows of all kind. It cuts away many middlemen. From now on, anybody can be a voice actor.
All the voice actors since the very 1st movies up until now will have their own packages. "The OG voice of [you name it] for $59.99!", with an exhaustive list of content it can be used on, a subscription depending on how many lines, if it's a main role etc.
Don't forget it's not just about adding a voice, other AIs like Chat-GPT can be mixed up in the process and result in real-time dialogue:
(can't find the original video, the author must've put it down since yesterday)
or this one. Pretty rough, but it's just a draft:
Anyway, be sure Intrepid is already on it.
Incorporating more brains to NPCs is doable if they have NPC management done with external identity management type of solution. This enables syncing and modifying their data with external systems, enables reactions to weather etc.
I hope they have such solution for NPCs, instead of static circle walking zombies.
I played wow for 10 years and eventhough i love the oldschool Text-Block Styled Quests.
''Bring 10 Meat'' is all i ever knew about the Quests
Because after 10 or 20 Quests you eventually stop reading EVERYTHING and thats kinda sad cause you will not know the quests story.
so i would LOVE to see something like the AI-Voice-Quests because with that you will get to know all the Story without reading through 20 or 50 Text Walls
If you like to read Quests or not one thing is clear. at some point after reading 100 Quests you will stop reading everyhting
AI slop just to enable people to be lazy? No thanks.
First of all, the quality is starting to not be bad anymore.
Secondly, accessibility has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with the visually impaired and dyslexic people also playing these games, and giving them a leg up.
Sure, but at the end of the day AI can only maybe mimic acting. For instance, knowing all VA is AI in a game would make me more prone to ignore the dialogue.
If you are visually impaired the quest dialogue is the least of your worries. Still isn't realistic to AI voice act the non-crucial parts of the game for the sake of one minority group of people's accessibility. That's just an excuse.
It's still a nice to have. Not a need to have in any way.
Tell that to the dyslexic people who give up reading text, but would love to have a button that simply reads the text to them with a good AI voice. The NPC doesn't have to come up with new dialogue everytime. At least that's not the point of the OP even if it was mentioned later on in the Asmongold video post.
Around 10% of the world is dyslexic. That's 100,000 players who already bought the A2 access this would help. It's not a small, insignificant minority. That's more people than are colorblind, which Intrepid already have accessibility options for.
As for visual impairment, it comes in many forms. It doesn't mean blindness. It can be cataracts, glaucoma, or macular degeneration, which can cause blurriness or distorted central vision etc. Not bad enough to not being able to play the game, but bad enough that text is harder to read even with increased font size.
Even tho Im very old and grew up reading lore and quests as text, I do see the need to progress in this area. And address the needs of those with reading issues. An option to pause to access some narration via your journal. Or that you can toggle NPCs to also read out their dialogue.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
How many of that 10% cares? How many of those that care got such a severe dyslexia they "gave up reading"?
Such an extreme shoehorning for something so optional for playing the game. Most people don't care about quest dialogue at all. Hell, the vocal minority wanting this AI mostly calls out for immersion, in a game with cupcake vendor skins for your freehold.
A minority of people playing the game will bother to read. A minority of those that read will care about lore. A minority of those will suffer from visual impairment or dyslexia. A minority of those that suffer from some kind of reading disability will be unable to read at all.
It's not about accessibility. You can fully enjoy and play the game without reading the quest dialogue.